CVE-2026-49267
Low
No strong exploitation signal.
CVSS breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
| Attack Vector | N | Network |
| Attack Complexity | H | High |
| Privileges Required | N | None |
| User Interaction | N | None |
| Scope | U | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | H | High |
| Integrity | N | None |
| Availability | N | None |
Timeline
- 2026-06-01 — Published (NVD)
- 2026-07-21 — Last modified (NVD)
Description
Apache Airflow's EmailOperator and the underlying `airflow.utils.email` helpers established SMTP STARTTLS connections without verifying the remote certificate when the deployment used `[email] smtp_starttls=True` without `[email] smtp_ssl`. An attacker positioned between the worker and the configured SMTP server (network MITM — typical hostile-network attack-surface for environments where the SMTP relay sits outside the worker's trust boundary) could present a self-signed certificate, have the worker complete the STARTTLS handshake silently, and capture the SMTP AUTH credentials and message contents the worker forwarded. This CVE covers the **core apache-airflow side** of the same root cause already covered for the SMTP provider by `CVE-2026-41016` (published 2026-04-27, covering `apache-airflow-providers-smtp`). Users who already applied the SMTP-provider fix from CVE-2026-41016 should additionally upgrade `apache-airflow` to 3.2.2 or later to cover the core-side path through `airflow.utils.email`. Affects deployments configured with `smtp_starttls=True` and `smtp_ssl=False` where the SMTP relay is reachable across a less-trusted network segment than the worker. Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later.